FAAAAAAACK! The Red Sox have apparently acquired Adrian Gonzalez.

Adrian Gonzalez is good. Really good. Really really fucking good. And we'll now be seeing him 18 times a year.

According to MLBtraderumors.com the Red Sox and Padres have struck a deal to send Adrian Gonzalez to Boston for a package of prospects. Gonzalez will make "just" $5.5 million this year, in the final year of his contract, and with his impending free-agency the Padres knew they couldn't afford their star first baseman long term. It must have been a difficult decision for the Padres seeing as how they only missed out on the playoffs by one game last year, but the team really is trading Gonzalez at what seems to be the peak of his value. The terms of the deal haven't yet been disclosed, but it has been written that it doesn't include any major league players and almost definitely centres around star prospect Casey Kelly.

The Jays were never really involved in any trade discussions for Gonzalez, but wholly rooster-dick would he have looked good in Toronto's line-up. Not even taking into consideration that he's won a gold glove in three of the past four seasons, the guy has hit more than 30 homeruns in each of the past 4 years, with an OBP at or near .400 for the last two. This guy is a stud, and Boston is a waaay better team for having acquired him. To give you an idea of how valuable Gonzalez is to a team, he was a 7.0 and a 6.3 WAR in the past two years, respectively. That's insane.

So where does this leave the Jays? Well it's obviously frustrating from a fan's perspective, as this was supposed to the year where the team really starts to turn the corner, with Boston and New York's aging lineups starting to show their cracks, and Tampa Bay losing significant parts of their core to free-agency. Unfortunately, this has not only added an MVP caliber player to Boston's line-up, you know damn well that the Yankees won't just sit idly by while the Sox stack their team. You know for a fact that New York will now up their pursuit of top free agents Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford and Jason Werth. It should be an interesting test of Anthopolous' will, however. Will he stay the course? Continue to build through the draft for a sustainable future? Or will he feel like he has to make a significant move to keep up with the big boys? 
I would assume most likely not. Should be fun winter meetings this year either way...